A distributed process control system, such as Honeywell Inc.'s TDC3000, provides a computerized plant management system, a version of which is described and claimed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,607,256, which issued Aug. 19, 1986. The process control system includes a universal operator station, which an operator responsible for the overall operation of the process or processes being supervised uses to obtain the information needed to perform this function. Additionally, the operator station includes the capability of transmitting information, including commands or instructions, to control subsystems of the plant management system to control the processes being supervised. All communications between the universal operator station and other modules of the network are via the network's proprietary Local Control Network (LCN) bus which provides the universal operator station with access to the data highways of any digital process control and data acquisition subsystems of the system of the plant management system.
All of the hardware and software components of the submodules of the operator station module were specially designed to perform the functions required of an operator station module such as producing a video display on a CRT, I/O functions for keyboards, printers, etc., mass storage devices, and a general purpose data processing capability for optimizing the system, for example. There has been a tremendous increase in the performance of commercially available personal computers (PCs), their associated peripheral devices, and related operating system software and with a concomitant reduction in their cost in recent years. Thus, it has become common to incorporate commercially available PCs, peripherals, and software into the peripheral submodule of a universal operator station module in place of the specialized hardware and software components of an operator station module.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,805,844 and U.S. Pat. No. 5,867,673, assigned to Honeywell Inc. (both hereby incorporated by reference), teach an improved interface circuit that permits communication via the interface circuit between the kernel submodule and the peripheral submodule of the universal operator station (OS) module in which the components of the peripheral module are standard commercially available electronic components and associated software. The improved interface circuit does so without requiring any changes to the hardware and/or software of the components of the kernel submodule, or to any of the other modules of the process control system. The kernel submodule communicates with its components and with the interface circuit over its module BUS, the structure and protocol of which is unchanged. The components of the peripheral submodule likewise communicate with one another over the peripheral component interface (PCI) BUS and with the interface circuit as well.
In this exemplary system, the kernel submodule connects to the PCI bus of a computer station connecting the peripheral components associated with the computer station, i.e. keyboard, display, pointing device to the kernel submodule. Therefore, these patents teach a system that adds an LCN interface module that connects a desktop PC computer device via the PCI bus to the LCN bus of the proprietary plant management system. The desktop PC then acts as an operator station in the plant management system.
Today, powerful general purpose computers are constructed, whereby the processor, RAM/ROM memory, mass storage, video, sound and I/O elements and components of a general purpose computer can be housed on a single board with a minimal number of small, optional, peripheral interface boards for special interconnections (e.g. special video capabilities, or LAN interfaces). Modern component boards, e.g., motherboards, can incorporate all the components required to operate such a computer, except for those components required to provide either user input to the computer or to display the output of the computer. These user operated input and output devices are typically found in the proprietary operator station described above and connected to the proprietary input/output interconnect hardware of the proprietary plant management system.
There is a need for a computer apparatus that interconnects a proprietary operator station of a proprietary plant management system to an industry standard form factor motherboard in order for the operator station to use a commercial workstation computer disposed on the motherboard to transmit information, including commands or instructions, to control subsystems of the plant management system and the processes being supervised.